10 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople
There are good salespeople and then there are great salespeople. Some are born with a natural gift for selling, whilst others acquire their skills via formal sales training and then hone them over the course of their sales career. Established in 1999, sales training specialists, Maguire Training, provide a wide range of professional courses which cover every aspect of the sales manager's or salesperson's role from Making Sales Appointments to Managing Sales Team Meetings. These invaluable training courses are designed to equip anyone in a sales role, whether just starting out or experienced, with the knowledge, skills and strategies needed to attain greater sales success and business profitability.
Clearly, not everyone is born a super-salesperson but for the rest of us, there are certain characteristics and habits that are invariably displayed by the most successful sellers which can be adopted by others to improve sales performance. Here, Maguire Training reveals 10 habits of highly successful salespeople:
1. Listen first, then sell
The best salespeople are excellent listeners and take time to hear all about a client's issues, needs and desires, gathering and processing the information they need to perfectly tailor the sale to the client.
2. Add value to every sale
A good salesperson keeps an ace up their sleeve - some sort of added extra, bonus or incentive - which isn't mentioned in the normal course of the sales negotiation and allows them to 'over-deliver' the surprise and delight the customer.
3. Treat lost sales as learning opportunities
Rather than lamenting a lost sale, the best salespeople will analyse the situation to identify exactly what happened and what could be done differently and better in a similar sales situation.
4. Continually seek out new and better ways of selling
To the best salesperson, selling is a journey and not a destination; to renew, refine and improve sales techniques for ever-greater success is an ongoing and constant goal.
5. Network, network, network
Great salespeople network at every opportunity, continually widening their circle of contacts, building their business relationships and uncovering new prospects in the process.
6. Don't neglect existing customers to chase new sales
The savvy salesperson knows that the majority of business is earned from repeat sales placed by satisfied customers and devotes as much effort to strengthening existing relationships as to building new ones.
7. Manage time for maximum productivity
Top salespeople don't waste time when they could be selling, they plan their days and weeks around maximising sales opportunities and minimising activities that are ultimately unproductive or unprofitable.
8. Don't chase lost causes
The most effective salespeople will quickly recognise when a potential customer is, in reality, a timewaster who has no intention of buying. Rather than needlessly expending time and energy on chasing a lost cause, they will withdraw and move on to the next potential sale.
9. Set consistently high standards, values and goals
If you're a great salesperson there's no point in setting sales targets that are comfortably achievable, nor becoming complacent and lowering your standards. Good enough is not good enough; there's always scope to aim higher and achieve more.
10. Believe 100% in whatever they're selling
Customers are experts at detecting insincerity; if as the salesperson you're not 100% genuinely enthusiastic and supportive of your service and product, it will show. Believe wholeheartedly in your product and potential customers will too.
Every good salesperson aspires to be a great salesperson, and Maguire Training offers the widest range of sales training courses to help sales managers and salespeople increase their knowledge, broaden their skill set and improve their performance.
Maguire Training also understands that salespeople lead busy working lives, so thanks to their innovative E-learning system, excellent courses such as Making Sales Appointments and Managing Sales Team Meetings are also available in an online training format.
